Author's Note: This is a shortlittle story that takes place on the day Jacen goes to see Tenel Ka during The Joiner King. It's the companion piece to Lapis Lazuli, which is the other side of the story. Written: 11/14/2005.
Verdigris
The courtyard was silent.
It surprised her how silent, seeing as how there were well over fifteen men practically surrounding her, hanging on her every movement and word.
She looked like she was deep in her reading, her eyes scanning the rows of words across the datapad meticulously. She wasn't putting any of it to memory, in fact, she wasn't really registering the words at all. Her mind was on other places.
Other people.
It had been years since she had seen him in the flesh, his wide chocolate eyes, his supposedly innocent smile that held one too many secrets. But she seemed to see visions of him everywhere.
Jacen.
It didn't help that she would come seat herself in her private courtyard, which was surrounded by numerous amounts of different plants and small animals. The large leaves and the canopies of vines overhead always reminded her of him. The way the sun would catch the emerald shades, the way the breeze blew through the fronds. She could always hear his boyish laugh, faintly floating by with the cool air.
The glare of the datapad ahead of her cast a slight glow on her skin, the light a sharp viridian. It reminded her of Myrkr, the lightsaber of his that clashed against thudbugs, against voxyn, against the Yuuzhan Vong. The lightsaber, in turn, that had sliced through her arm years before.
She could only smile at that memory now. Because it was of him.
As her eyes lifted to the walls of jade around her, she felt something. Something that spawned an eternal calm in her mind.
And telling her guards to hold their fire and the suitors to stand down, she felt her lips upturn at the sight before her.
The wind played through the blades of grass at their feet and through the leaves overhead. His lightsaber was hanging off at his side.
That was the day that he meant more to her than life itself.